When dying, people usually think that a natural death is peaceful. But studies have shown that in the last 2 years of life, 26% of the elderly have been experiencing pain on different levels. There were three types of pain options were given: mild, moderate and severe. It was reported that the pain was steady up until their last 4 months of life.Elderly with other health conditions such us heart disease, experienced the same amount of pain.
A factor like arthritis though, has been reported with 60% troubling pain.
This might be connected to the fact that the body has begun shutting itself down and cannot support its own weight. It also proves that the body is slowly shutting itself down, starting with the least contributing parts of the body. The pain might be more severe towards the last 4 months since the major bodily function could be shutting down.
7 comments:
I think that it's interesting when people say that death is peaceful or beautiful or something of the sort. Perhaps this is just due to the fact that we tend to overlook physical pain, or at least we try to, and instead we just focus on our lives as a whole, rather than little bits of time periods in which we have experienced pain. It does not come as a surprise to me that we will feel pain in our final days as elderly people, but I think that even so, it is important to try to look past that pain and live as if life were painless.
I don't think that it's a surprise at all that elderly people feel physical pain during their last months of life. It's sad to see the statistics on it but still a part of life that we'll all need to go through when we get old too.
This didn't surprise me whatsoever. I actually was a little relieved. To be honest, I thought way more people experience pain when they get older, at least way more than 26%, so in my opinion this was actually comforting. My mom is contstantly complaining about pain as she gets older, and shes only 54. Its nice to hear that not everyone gets aches and pains as we age.
It isn't a surprise that during the last few months of life people feel a lot of physical pain. Like Danielle said, I'm actually surprised that not everyone experiences pain as we age. Because as we get older our bodies tend to weaken, and we get sick and have health problems.
This is a bit random, but it's JUST as vital to keep a healthy social life as it is a healthy body.
My grandmother is around 94 years old. Her organs are functioning perfectly but she can't walk around or even talk that much, sometimes when I visit her I'm not even sure that she knows I'm standing in front of her. Having a healthy social life would have made her go outside more. But because she lacks a social life, she is in her current state.
Our bodies weren't made to live past 60+. That's why we start to feel more pain after that time because the body is breaking itself down. The more we extend our lives, the bigger chance that we will start to experience pain farther away from our death day. I.E: We live till 80 and start to feel pain around 70 now; It would be, we live till 100 and start to feel pain at our 80's.
It's really sad that the elderly have to experience this type of pain in their last moments of life. Unfortunately, it's all part of life and we have to learn to deal with it. It's really difficult for others to cope with this type of pain, and we can learn from this that we should always take care and love our parents and grandparents.
It really doesn't come as a surprise that those nearing death experience more pain. Their bodies are shutting down; nothing is "peaceful" about that. It's also quite sad for us to believe that death can be seen as something peaceful just because the elder died "naturally." We don't know what they're going through, and I'm sure it's anything but peaceful.
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